Going hands-on with the Amazon Fire Phone (pictures)

Take a closer look at Amazon's new Fire Phone smartphone.

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The Amazon Fire Phone is powered by Amazon's wealth of content and hardware savvy, and packs a slew of features primarily aimed at helping you find things to buy. On Amazon, of course. The Amazon Fire Phone is available for pre-order now: $199 gets you 32GB of storage, while $299 gets you 64GB.

The Fire Phone is no slouch in the specs department: that 4.7-inch 720p IPS display sports Gorilla Glass 3 and packs 590 nits of brightness. The phone runs on a 2.2GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon 800 CPU, coupled with 2GB of RAM.

Firefly arguably stole the show. The feature -- which has its own dedicated button -- recognizes QR codes and music, and can list Amazon prices and direct buying links.

And it does so much more: point the app at a scrap of paper, and it'll scan phone numbers for you to call. Point it at a work of art at a museum, and you'll get a Wikipedia entry for the piece. Let it listen in while you're watching TV, and you'll get details direct from Amazon-owned IMDB.

Another curio: Dynamic Perspective, which is powered by the bevvy of cameras populating the front of the phone. There's a camera on each corner as well as a center front-facing camera, and they're tasked with knowing where your eyes are at all times.

You'll be able to control much of the phone with tilting gestures: scrolling through web pages or books, or pan around the map, and the phone's tech will (ideally) give you the best perspective with nifty 3D effects.

There's only one camera on the rear, but it isn't exactly resting on its laurels. The 13MP rear-facing camera offers a an f/2.0 lens and optical image stabilization -- complete with tiny motors that Amazon claims will correct much of the motion blur from hand-shake.

While we'll need to wait until July 25 to see how customers -- and arguably more important, developers -- respond to the phone's launch, Amazon has certainly made a strong impression. Stay tuned to CNET for more coverage.